Robert Kurtzman, who
directed this film ‘The Rage’, is originally a make-up
artist by trade and allow me to tell you he’s a damn
good one. The gore and makeup effects in this flick are
simply amazing and I recommend that you don’t eat, as I
was doing, while watching this movie. Unfortunately, as
I have said on numerous occasions, movies are ultimately
about actors. If you have a movie with ILM quality
special effects and an award winning set designer, a
cinematographer who paints with light like Van Gogh and
a top notch director but you have a group of actors who
can’t sell their part, or worse yet, can’t deliver a
line, then your movie is fairly screwed. All that other
stuff is really important too, just to let you know how
hard it is to make a halfway decent movie, but you gotta
have some decent actors to start things off. My man Mr.
Kurtzman casted some really good looking actors, but boy
oh boy did these kids struggle with selling us that they
knew what they were doing.

Movie Villain Veteran
Andrew Divoff, who is Robert DeNiro in this flick
compared to the rest of the cast, portrays evil
scientist Doctor Viktor Vasilenko who for some reason
hates us capitalistic, cotton candy loving American
Imperialist and in his tucked away barn is doing live
clinicals for a new drug he’s created. Once this drug is
perfected, which he has called The Rage, it will
transform regular folks into blood thirsty unstoppable
zombies. After injecting one of his test subjects with
the drug, he finally has success, but alas it was as bit
too successful as this zombie breaks free killing the
doc in the process and escaping into the world.

Next we are at one of
those Satan filled rave parties where our future victims
are getting down, but not before our wayward zombie
wanders up to a duo doing the nasty and lays them to
waste as our gratuitous nudity fix has been satisfied.
At this same party Kat, as played by Erin Brown, or
Misty Mundae as she is better known by us B-movie
aficionados, is high on ecstasy and partying down with
her man Josh (Ryan

Hooks) and her girlfriend
Olivia (Rachel Scheer) while her best friend Pris (Sean
Serino) and her man Jay (Anthony Clark) look on. Since
Kat is all high and stuff she hardly knows what she’s
doing as her, Josh and the very pretty Olivia get down
Menage-a-trois style, though we don’t get to see it. Why
is this important? We’re gonna let you know in a bit. So
our future victims jump in the Winnebago and head on
home but fortunately Jay knows a ‘short cut’. Yes I
know, stop yer groaning. Anyways, by this time the
infection is underway, and Kat is all pissed off because
Olivia is sitting on Josh’s lap choking him with her
tongue down his throat and starts a fight. This
distracts Jay who runs over a zombie chowing down in the
middle of the road thus disabling the Winnebago. Worst
yet is that a group of vultures have devoured one of the
dead zombies and are now flesh-eating flying harbingers
of death and they hate horny young adults even more than
Jason Vorhees does. Well now the chase is on as our
group of yung ‘uns try to flee the terror that is ‘The
Rage’, and considering that two of them are African
American in descent and a third is something else I
can’t quite decipher, I’m not liking their chances all
that much.

There’s some good stuff
here to be sure. I particularly liked Divoff’s portrayal
as the evil doctor and his flashback scenes detailing
why he’s setting off the world by releasing The Rage
virus. Not only is Kurtzman a great Makeup artist but
he’s not half bad as a movie director either as he
frames a good scene, keeps his action moving and even
manages to keep the narrative driving this thing fairly
focused and on point, which is EXTREMELY rare in movies
like this. ‘The Rage’ is one gory bloody mess so if
you’re the least bit sensitive to these kinds of images
you might want to steer clear of this one.

There’s really only one
problem with this movie and that’s the fact that most of
the young attractive cast can’t act worth a damn. I mean
I know Misty Mundae has never been considered a great
actress or anything, but jeez, girlfriend has been in
like 8,000 movies and I’m thinking she should have
picked up a few things along the way. I don’t want to be
mean because these kids seem like they are all very nice
and they are all very good looking, but doggonit, just
remembering your lines ain’t acting. Admittedly some the
dialog was forced and trite, particularly when they were
just sitting around talking to each other which probably
didn’t inspire these kids all that much, but there were
times it seemed as if there were cue cards behind the
camera helping them along. Now to their benefit they do
run and scream and yell and die up real good and once
the movie got around to them having to talk less and
scream more they did become more tolerable, but you
still have to get to that point.

Anyway, a lot of you out
there won’t even care because there is enough gore out
there for you gore hounds to keep you satisfied for
weeks, though I probably would have taken more advantage
of Erin Brown’s propensity to get naked though, a
propensity Mr. Kurtzman inexplicably chose to completely
ignore. But if you can get past the stiff and wooden
acting, there is fun to be had in ‘The Rage’.